Personal profile

Professor Subhes Bhattacharyya is an internationally renowned energy specialist working on global energy-environment issues with more than 25 years of experience. Subhes specialises in energy, regulatory and environmental studies from a multi-disciplinary perspective taking techno-economic, governance, and management and policy aspects into consideration. He has more than 25 years of involvement with the energy sector in various capacities: graduate-level teaching in energy, research and industry experience. Subhes mainly focuses on applied, interdisciplinary research on developing economies, with a special emphasis on energy and environmental issues in South and South East Asia (particularly on India, Thailand, and Vietnam). He has extensively worked on energy sector management issues such as energy sector regulation and restructuring in developing countries, and policy issues related to reconciling energy security and climate changes, and energy access issues. Subhes’ research is supported by various modelling efforts, including end-use type long-range energy-environment system modelling, operations research and other decision support systems as well as regulatory and investment analysis tools.

Research interests/expertise

Subhes’ interest in energy research includes the following:

a) Sector management issues of developing countries

Solution strategies for the provision of clean and affordable energy for the poor through electrification and decentralized energy options. This is my recent focus and I am leading a research consortium that is researching on business models for off-grid electrification in South Asia.

Security of energy supply, vulnerability and mitigation of climate –security challenge – this line of research adds the fourth dimension to the energy sustainability issue and is relevant for many countries. This links with the rural energy issue as well. This line of research led to a doctoral research and a number of papers in reputed journals.

Identification and analysis of energy sector reform sustainability issues, restructuring and regulation of the energy sector and rural electrification problems. Energy sector governance remains a major issue in many countries.

Energy pricing, taxation and subsidies in developing countries: Distorted energy pricing in developing remains a major policy issue and my work questions the general wisdom that focuses on market forces to correct the prices.

Sustainable energy in developing countries

Energy Demand analysis and demand management

Policies for fossil fuels and renewable energies.

c) Energy modelling

Modelling energy demand in developing countries: I focus on energy system modelling using end-use method, optimisation and input-output methods. This also resulted in a Policy Research paper for the World Bank

Extension of the index decomposition methodology – This is an area of was applied to an analysis of climate change analysis

Electricity system expansion studies for conventional studies and to capture vulnerability and energy security aspects.

Areas of teaching

Energy and Sustainable Development

Energy Economics

Energy Regulation

Oil and gas economics

Qualifications

Subhes holds a PhD and an Advanced Masters degree in Applied Economics with specialisation in Energy Economics from the University Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble II, Grenoble, France. He also holds a Master of Engineering in Energy Planning and Policy from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand and a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Bengal Engineering College, University of Calcutta, India.

Courses taught

Subhes will be teaching Sustainable Development for the graduate students and Energy Economics for the undergraduate students.

He has taught the following courses as part of his earlier employments:

Consultancy work

Subhes has worked with consulting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers (India), National Economic Research Associates (NERA) and Development Consultants Limited (India). He has also worked as a short-term consultant for the World Bank.

Current research students

Subhes is supervising two PhD students as first supervisor:

Sanusi Ohiare working on financing mechanisms for electricity access in Nigeria

Majbaul Alam working on Mini-grids for off-grid electrification in Bangladesh.